Fraudster jailed for using 10K bots and AI songs to outstream Taylor Swift
Man gets 18 months for AI scheme stealing $8M in music streaming royalties.
Man gets 18 months for AI scheme stealing $8M in music streaming royalties.
The short version
- After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms.
- In a press release Tuesday, the US Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.
- First charged in 2024, Smith successfully ran the scheme for seven years without detection.
What happened
Starting in 2017, Smith began using fake email accounts and “fraudulently obtained debit cards” to create “thousands of fraudulent accounts” on services including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the DOJ said. He then employed software that pushed the bots to continuously stream songs that he claimed to own, which the DOJ said were AI-generated.
Why it matters
Smith’s streaming fraud didn’t just hurt platforms but genuine artists who share royalty pools on streaming services, the DOJ claimed.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.